The tearjerker is a film that transcends one’s predispositions and cuts into those deep and often impenetrable portions of our shared, collective humanity to move us in ways we never dared to admit. Another view, one much less celebratory, reads the tearjerker as the sort of film that eschews realism for romanticized dramatic effect, that idealizes human relations, or that revoltingly rejoices in the most insidious forms of Hollywood sentimentality. Sometimes intellectually or creatively deeper than acknowledged, but still retaining of the elements of the cheesiness factor, are films that balance both of these tensions and contradictions; films that are both at times lurching toward being maudlin and overwrought and yet at other times depict authentic and truthful depth.

Here is a short list of films that will have you racing for the Kleenex.

The Way We Were (1973)

Kramer vs Kramer (1979)

Umberto D (1952)

Sophie’s Choice (1982)

Love Story (1972)

Terms of Endearment (1983)

Bambi (1942)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Glory (1989)

An Affair to Remember (1957)

The English Patient (1996)

The Elephant Man (1980)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

The Mission (1986)

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968)

Movie

The Way We Were

The tearjerker is a film that transcends one’s predispositions and cuts into those deep and often impenetrable portions of our shared, collective humanity to move us in ways we never dared to admit. Another view, one much less celebratory, reads the tearjerker as the sort of film that eschews realism for romanticized dramatic effect, that idealizes human relations, or that revoltingly rejoices in the most insidious forms of Hollywood sentimentality. Sometimes intellectually or creatively deeper than acknowledged, but still retaining of the elements of the cheesiness factor, are films that balance both of these tensions and contradictions; films that are both at times lurching toward being maudlin and overwrought and yet at other times depict authentic and truthful depth.

Here is a short list of films that will have you racing for the Kleenex.